Day 3 - Zuiderzeemuseum and Enkhuisen

Moments from today:

-We all woke up in the middle of the night again - this time Stone got in bed with me and I feel asleep with him scratching my back and repeatedly kissing my cheek. Lucy took 2 hours going back to sleep and Erik and Lindsay gave up and just got up for the day at 2:30 a.m. 

-Erik rode Pete Clarke's bike (Pete is 6'5") across the freeway to pick up a rental car, getting in trouble with police (but making them laugh) for misinterpreting the "No bikes" for a "Bikes ok" sign. Driving, biking and even walking here are scary!! People go fast, don't wear helmets, and claim their right of way without mercy.

-We met Ed's Aunt and Uncle and their grandson to drive to Enkhuisen, a quaint town by the sea where there is an open-air museum of an entire fishing village reconstructed as it would have been in 1905. Many of the houses and stores are actual buildings that they saved and restored from the Island of Urk - some of the house frames go back to the 1600's, and they employed actors in costume based on actual families who lived there. I had several thoughts: 1. People need a village. This one was unified by geography and common culture. Each member had a part to play: like "Fiddler on the Roof" there was the village tailor, the village scholar (the only one who had been to post-primary school and could write), the washer woman, the butcher, the cheese maker, and so on. I lamented the loss of the "village" in modern suburban life and felt grateful to belong to a community of friends who provide that feeling of common identity and the joy of allowing myself to rely on others and be relied upon. I've lived through phases of my life when that was missing and I felt like the sailor I read about today who drifted out to sea on an ice floe. He survived, but it wasn't fun. 2. I love history. Tell me about Physics or Computer Science and my brain is coated in Teflon. Tell me a story about a person with a face and feelings and no matter when or where or how they lived, my heart beats with theirs and I laugh and cry with them. I love human stories. 3. I wonder if my kids' ancestors dressed in clothing like my kids tried on today. I sometimes wonder who in our family history looked or felt or acted most like me... I wish I could meet her! And today I wondered the same thing about my kids in their wooden shoes. I would like to meet the ancestors who wore that clunky footwear and eclectic mixes of stripes and flowers and see those people button-nose-to-button-nose with my kids. 

-Jet lag is trying to destroy our family. Not getting enough sleep makes people grumpy on even the most beautiful of days! :) 

-After the museum, we got take-out Indian Food (the Netherlands has tons of ethnic food, especially from all regions of Asia and Africa. This dates back to the days when the Dutch colonized those parts of the world) and ate it aboard Uncle Dolf and Aunt Rea's boat. Stone hated his food and bonked his head and wouldn't stop crying and Dolf and Rea were stressed out about the curry staining their boat and the kids falling in the water... but it was a nice thought.

-Everyone fell asleep in the car... then woke up at 9 pm when we got home. It's past 11 pm now and I'm sitting outside the door of Sophie's and Stone's room still listening to the air mattress creak. At least my threats have made him stop kicking the wall and yelling "I can't sleep! I don't want to sleep in a purple bed!!" (I started out with reason, kindly-explained boundaries, appealing to his empathy, then incentives - Nutella sandwich for breakfast, back scratches and lullabies, then more sleep medicine and finally 5 minutes ago I grew horns and a tail and breathed fire and what do you know - it worked). I promised I would include Allebest moments and Alleworst moments and everything in between.

-But let's end on a great moment - today was beautiful, I love Holland... and look at those kids!!!